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35C3 preroll musik
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Herald: Hello everybody. A warm welcome
to our friend Nicholas Maigret from
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DISNOVATION.ORG. They are making
contemporary art with research and hacking
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to question the positive ideology for
technology, to stimulate a post-growth
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technology narrative. So I am quite
interested and give him a warm welcome.
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Applause
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Nicholas Maigret: Hello Everyone. Ouh does
it work? Can you hear me? Hey, Yeah.
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Hello, so I'm Nicholas Maigret and
together with Maria Roszkowska we
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initiated the DISNOVATION.ORG collective
and our collective intends to reveal and
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challenge the dominant ideology of
technological innovation and circulate
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alternative narrative. So I will show you
a selection of projects and mainly it's a
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few projects selected to resonate with the
CCC and the topics here. So we do
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basically creations so we organize the
festivals and we create the art species in
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a different series of projects around
basically the rhetoric of technological
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innovation and the effect of this dominant
ideology on society. We also
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work on publications in books. I will get
back to that in a minute. And we do
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artworks and site specific projects that I
will present in the second half of this
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talk. So the first part will be focusing
on our curatorial practices around this
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idea of counter-narratives on
technological innovation. So I will
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introduce three works. The first one is a
pirate book. So it's a book we started to
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compile in 2014. It's a compilation of
stories about sharing and distributing
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cultural contents outside the boundaries of
local economies, politics, laws, religions,
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and so on. So with this work we tried to
explore the notions such as the piracy of
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necessity, the idea of new originals. And
I think it's interesting to go back to
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this project to come back to this project
in the context of the Anthropocene and the
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potential imminent collapse. Because I
think there is a need for non-techno-
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solutionist and non-techno-positivist
stories at the moment and somehow a need
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to develop post growth narratives. So
we'll see what we can learn from the
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following examples taken from the book
around concerns like repair, care,
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maintenance, and creative appropriation.
So the first excerpt from the book I would
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like to focus on, is an example from Mexico,
given by our contributor Jota Izquierdo
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and basically it focuses on the stories of
a craftsman that works for improving the
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practices of street CD vendors in Mexico. So
I will I will play a quick excerpt of it.
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Video is playing with music
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Nicholas: So in the book we cover multiple
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stories in this sort. We just focus on a
couple of those.
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musik from video in the background
Nicholas: The second one is based in the
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Sahel. It's a contribution by Christopher
Kirkley and is presenting basically how a
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big part of music distribution in Sahel is
done through copies between dumb phones
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using Bluetooth. So it's a way somehow to
create a circulation of contents by
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nearest neighbor dynamics, basically. And
the third example I would like just to
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introduce is el paquete semanal. Basically
it's in the context of Cuban lack of fast
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internet or internet at all. Basically el
paquete semanal is a sort of substitute
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to the internet in the form of a package.
It's a hard drive, as you can see here and
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this hard drive also circulates one copy
at a time. And it's basically a
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compilation of all the content that is
considered to be missing for people so you
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can see on this hard drive TV shows, books,
movies, music, and all the sorts of
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content you could expect from an internet
browsing experience. So you can find the
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book online for free. And we cover many of
the stories but tonight I will just
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present those and connect with this last
contribution by Clément Renaud. He did a
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long term six years of research in China
and he shared with us this story about
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Shanzhai technology production. It's
basically something between piracy and
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hybridization in Chinese manufacturing.
And I will focus on this one a little bit
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more so in his article Clément Renaud
described specific local tech
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innovation named Shanzhai. The Shanzhai
culture is a mix of piracy, DIY, and anti-
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establishment. It literally means
"mountain fortress" and it comes from a
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novel from the 13th century that tells a
story of a group of outlaws that hides in
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the mountain to be outside the system and
outside the regulation of the state
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basically. So in a more recent context
Shanzhai refers basically to
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manufacturing, it emerged in in the 50s
for instance in Hong Kong to describe a
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small scale factories that were producing
cheap low quality items and mainly
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counterfeit products of famous brands like
Gucci or Nike and they sold those products
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on markets that would not buy the fancy,
expensive originals. And as electonic
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manufacturing migrated to Shenzhen in the
early 2000s this informal network of
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Shanzhai production found the perfect
product in the mobile phone. So our first
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acquisition in this collection was
basically the the Ghana phone and we've
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been very intrigued by this device. So
basically this device has not been
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conceived for its superficial design but
it's it's been conceived to fill a gap a
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need, a niche market. So this phone is a
power bank basically to fill the gap of
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the frequent power cuts in Ghana. So it
has a battery that can last for a week.
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You can also charge other devices with it,
recharge your computer, another phone. You
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can also use it as a light. So that's why
you have a hook to connect it on the on
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the ceiling. And basically it's a whole
package of functions and properties that
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were designed specifically for local
markets that nowhere any brands were
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paying attention at. So we were very
interested by this track of research and
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we wanted to dig some more. So we started
with a simple protocol. We started to
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collect hybrid phones that were combining
multiple functions and designed for those
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niche markets all over the place, mainly
in the global south but not only, you
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will see. So you can find a lot of fancy
and weird devices that I will show, and
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those devices we've been collecting them
in markets in Shenzhen like Huaqiangbei
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and also online like on Taobao,
Aliexpress, and so on. So one of the
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reasons that we wanted to focus our
research on mobile phones, because
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Shanzhai production is not about mobiles,
it's about every kind of technology I
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would say. But we kind of wanted to stick
to one sort of device to have this
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continuity over 20 years. And also because
somehow a huge contrast could be seen
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through the mobile phone between sort of
north hemisphere culture or this somehow
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the standardized culture of the black
rectangle we all have in our pockets here.
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And this kind of non normalized
technological imaginaries that were
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emerging there and somehow it reminds us I
think that although technological
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possibilities always exist beyond the
ultra normalized industry. So I will dig
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into a few of those.
musik from video in the background
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Nicholas: So each of those examples I think
a tell a specific story and reveal
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specific uses and cultures. So here you
can see a lighter phone. So it's basically
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a phone that does cigarette lighter. This
one is I would say a working cigarette
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pack that also includes a mobile phone or
perhaps the other way around.
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inaudible voice from video
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Nicholas: And this one is a razor phone.
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So it's a phone that includes a working
shaver.
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razor noise from video
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Nicholas: So since 2015 we've been
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collecting about hundreds of those hybrid
phones and I will zoom into a few of very
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interesting specimens and stories. So here
you can see the card phone, it's the size
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of a credit card. It used to be the
cheapest on the market. It cost about
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twelve dollars and it's made of a single
board. So basically it can be very easily
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replicated and optimized, modified, and so
on. So that's why it's been called the
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Gongkai Phone which means open source and
you can find this board in multiple
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versions in the later generation of phones
I will present in a minute.
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Video music in the background
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So this one is called the Buda phone. It's
been designed as a digital alternative for Buddhist
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prayers and related religious activities.
So basically it replicates for instance
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the ritual components like the burning of
incense, purification rites, meditative
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music, and more. So all of those features
are included in basically the UX of the phone.
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musik from video
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Nicholas: So this is the sound system
phone. It's been designed for mainly the
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elderly people. So the favorite one of the
favorite activities of the elderly in
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China is group dancing on public squares in
evenings. And this specific phone has been
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designed for this purpose. And so it comes
with a several gigabytes of old fashioned,
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communist songs that Chinese pensioners
are particularly keen on. It has huge
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buttons. I mean it's really designed for
the elderly. So the device is like that
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size. And there is also support to stand
in front of the dancers and the powerful
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light torch to ensure a smooth return home
after the dance.
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Speaker on Video: Small. Nice and neat to
put away up in the bums
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Yeah, I'm a pro,
I can do about 20 in 10 minutes
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Speaker on Video: Why in Mars bars?
Speaker on video: Because they are
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available in most of the visit halls, you
can't take something that might not be
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there because if you do they're gonna
notice it's different. I'd say that
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there's probably 75 percent of prisoners
have phones in jail. I take them in on the
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person in places where you wouldn't get
searched, the front of your trousers, in
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your bra.
Nicholas: So this one is the prisoner
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phone or it's also called Beat The Buzz.
The buzz is a device for scanning
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prisoners. So actually, It started on the
market as the smallest phone on the
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market. But for some reason it became
popular among prisoners, many in the UK
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because of its small size. It's the size
of a finger. And because of the fact also
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it's composed of 99 percent of plastic, so
it's barely detectable during the checks
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in prisons and you can easily smuggle it.
Inside food, inside the body obviously but
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also in weird ways like inside drones,
carrier pigeons, rats and so on. So we try
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to exhibit all this collection of weird
devices in their natural habitat, in a
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way, so we built a reproduction of a
street market kiosk where we basically
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showcase this collection of hybrid phones
and together with that we have a couple
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of video documentaries like this one, that
kind of tells the larger Shanzhai culture
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and focus on the Chinese ecosystem of
technological devices production and
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distribution. So that's how it looks when
it's shown. Yeah. That's it for this one.
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And the last cultural project. I'd like to
introduce is a work in progress. It's
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called the Museum Of Failures and I will
start with a quote by Paul Virilio.
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Quote read by a female voice
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Nicholas: So as you could guess with this
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quote this project is about uncovering and
compiling counter narratives about the
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history of technological innovation and
our project is basically to compile those
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under represented stories, that can help us
to disrupt the dominant positive discourse
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on innovation and help us maybe to think
about technology in post growth era. So
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the project takes the shape of workshops,
conferences, events, and we share it as a
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database and exhibitions. So this symbolic
museum is structured in two floors. They
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go in negative numbers. They are somehow
the underground counterparts of usual
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technological museum. So each floor is a
potential sort of entry, or perspective on
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the museum sorted by topics. So you have
like intentional failures, fiction and
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dystopias, risk and disasters, unexpected
outcomes, and so on. So the first part of
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this future book is a collection of
aborted projects: flops, errors,
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malfunctions, business failures, ethical
rejections, disasters, and somehow reflects
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the outlines of our society from a
historical, symbolic, poetic, and cultural
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point of view. The second part of this
book though will be based on interviews
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and contributions and we are open to
proposals. So if you have stories or
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research on post growth technological
imaginaries and counter narratives on
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technological innovation, you're welcome to
submit. Okay so the second part of this
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talk will be about our artworks, specific
selection to resonate with the CCC as
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well. And we grouped it into this idea of
psychoanalysis of the hyper connected era.
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So the first artwork I will introduce, is the Pirate
Cinema. So basically the copy culture got
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mainstream with BitTorrent and the Pirate
Bay in the early 2000s and it became an
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essential part of culture for a whole
generation. And at the same time as this
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process since the early days of peer to
peer it coexisted with an intense level of
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surveillance. So this surveillance was
conducted by universities, cooperations,
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states. Some times for statistical
purposes, just to know how much is
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consumed from different types of content
and so on, and most of the time for
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copyright infringement. And we got very
interested in how we could disrupt those
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systems of network surveillance basically
and use it to reveal the dynamics and the
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materiality of peer to peer file sharing.
So basically to expose the materiality of
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this process and the geographical dynamics
of the contents that were consumed and
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shared. So I'll show a few excerpts of
this project.
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inaudible sound snippets from video
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Nicholas: So we programed the server to
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use BitTorrent and to synchronize every
morning with the Top 100 videos of the
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Pirate Bay. So it's a sort of a man in the
middle attack where we see what people are
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sharing through our server. So it's a way
to view the global dynamics through one
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node of the BitTorrent network. And as you
can see on the video it also reveals the
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user IP address and the countries. And
somehow it's a way to depict the
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geographical dynamics of media sharing in
the consumptions. The next project I'd
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like to introduce following this idea of
counter narratives. It's a series about
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illicit contents. It's called Blacklist.
So we got interested in basically who
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controls and decides what should be
visible or not online or what should be
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blocked or not. And how those least are
built and used. And somehow how maybe it
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can be something that reveals the value
system we live in. So there are numerous
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blacklists. You can subscribe to more or
less efficient and up to date. Script
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blacklists, Squid blacklists, Sheller
list, Cisco and so on and somehow they
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remind us literally of the index of
forbidden books that used to exist in
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libraries around the globe. It was a list
basically of publication considered a
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hereticall, immoral or anticlerical. And
you know in an internet blacklist nowadays
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you have pretty much the same. So
addresses that can be blocked, they are
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organized into categories as you can see
here. And as a sysadmin you can decide
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what type of content you want to block. So
such lists are used by universities,
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towns, airports, companies, individuals
and so on. And then it helps you basically
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to restrict the access to specific content
on your network. So you have categories
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like copyright, porn, pharmacy and so on
and you can see weird stuff like feminist
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for instance and I guess it reveals the
for profit nature of this list and the
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fact that anything can be requested, if
enough clients are asking for it. So this
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work took the shape of a sort of an
encyclopedia in 13 volumes of 666 pages.
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It's basically an encyclopedia of illicit
and filtered sites. It is structured like
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an old phone book. It's a sort of ready
made, that reveals the moral sort of
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portraits or framework of the web.
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Video: Blacklists is a directory of the
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prohibitions of the internet, deployed in
the form of an encyclopedia in 13 volumes
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of 666 pages each. It is an extensive
collection of restricted websites used
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for the automatic filtering of traffic
considered ilicit or licentious. Just
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like the intent of forbidding libraries
the Blacklist project points out the
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sidelining of online content that could be
dangerous for the very survival of the
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system. With around two million web sites
extracted from commercial content control
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softwares this collection reveals the
cultural social and ideological model of
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our society through what has been deemed
unfit for consultation by specific groups
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and institutions around the globe.
Nicolas: So I guess you get the idea. All
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right. So this next work is predictive art
bot and I will need to contextualize a
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bit. So basically we live in the era of
hyper connectivity and the time we spend
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on phone and social media is radically
increase over the last ten years. This has
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a strong effect on us. Online news and
communication tends to monopolize a lot of
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our attention and it does have a growing
influence on our types of concerns and
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priorities. So we know about effects like
a filter bubble, media echo chambers and to
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some extent the influence of social media
and hyper connection tend towards a sort
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of uniformization not only of our concerns
but also somehow of our innovation and
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creativity. And it tends towards a higher
chance of predictability of our behaviors.
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So stemming basically from the art field
we started to notice somehow similar
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patterns amongst the artists around us. So
we spotted numerous similar imaginaries
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similar trends in each interest groups.
And we started to observe similar topics,
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similar ideas and even similar ways of
realizing artworks and answering to ideas
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and concerns. So at some point we were
like: Do we really need artists to simply
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follow the trends? And do we need artists
to just illustrate the latest technical
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technological bells. Maybe no. So that's
where the project started with the simple
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question and we decided to automatize the
process of mainstream creativity we could
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say. And to push it toward sort of the
absurd. So to do that, we created a bot.
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And this bot basically is subscribed to
hundreds of RSS feeds. That's the sort of
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feeds we will get on our cell phone, our
Twitter feed you know. So were basically
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subscribing the bot to the same. And then
the bot is using some python library to
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try to identify the most significant
keyword in the headlines and those
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keywords are stored and then we organized
using Tracery in a sort of generative
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poetry to create potential concept for
artworks and those concepts are reposted on
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Twitter and different places to basically
create a new weird inspiration machine.
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That's what you will see now.
Video: Predictive Art Bot is a bot that
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turns the latest media headlines into
artistic concepts. In the Age of Hyper
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connectivity the perverse implications of
media echo chambers are becoming more and
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more obvious. Groups of similar behaviors
are being partitioned into filter bubbles
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while the few massively reposted topics
tend to monopolize most of the available
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attention. Search insular echo chambers
strongly effect ways of thinking, resulting
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in increasingly homogeneous imaginaries
within groups of likeminded people.
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Predictive art bar caricature is the
predictability of media influenced
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artistic concepts by automating and
skirting the human creative process. But
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beyond mere automation, it aims to
stimulate unbridled, counter intuitive and
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even disconcerting associations of ideas.
To do so it continually monitors emerging
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trends among the most influential news
sources in fields as heterogeneous as
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politics, environment, innovation,
culture, activism, or health. On this
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basis it identifies and combines keywords
to generate concepts of artworks in a
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fully automated way ranging from
unreasonable to prophetic to absurd. Each
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prediction becomes a thought experiment
waiting to be incubated, misused, or
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appropriated by a human host.
Nicolas: Okay. And we also commissioned a
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few artists to interpret and realize those
projects a few times. Okay. The last
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project for tonight. I see that it's
almost time for me. So the last project is
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a map and it's a work in progress for a
future long-term project. And basically it
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focuses on the fact, that the web has
become one of the most impactful vehicles
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for the propagation of ideas in culture.
And hyper connectivity did intensify the
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rise of online politics and made it way
easier to manipulate public opinions. And,
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I mean this happened at a sort of
unprecedented scale. So you know we've
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seen the emergence of political bots, fake
accounts, troll farms and so on. But today
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I will focus on the cultural aspect of
this battleground. So one of the important
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aspects of online culture wars that we
were trying to map, is perhaps this notion
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of transgression, so as one of the Trump
supporters, Milo Yiannopoulos used to say
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"Conservatism is the new punk".
Milo Yiannopoulos: And think about how the
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culture wars have changed, and changed
very rapidly and in a very short space of
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time. The dissident element in culture: punk,
mischief, irreverence is now better
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represented in politics by a "Make America
Great Again" hat than by anything on the
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left. If you want to annoy somebody, you
want to piss your parents off, If you want
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to be ejected from polite society as this
poor angel has been. There is no better
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way to do it than to cast a vote for
Donald Trump. This is the new punk.
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Shouting
Milo Yiannopoulos: This is the new punk.
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Republican is the new cool. Thank you for
coming.
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Shouting
Nicolas: So in the context of the
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political correctness and self-censorship,
public shaming. That was occuring a lot
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in the left. This obscure style of sort of
iconic, cynical, mockery emerges as a sort
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of counterforce. And transgression made
the alt-right attractive in a way. And
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this transgressive online culture is well
presented in the book of Angela Nagel
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called Kill All Normies.
Audio: What seem to hold them all together
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in their obscurity was a love of mocking
the earnestness and moral self flattery of
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what felt like a tired liberal
intellectual conformity running right
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through from establishment liberal
politics to the more militant enforcers of
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new sensitivities and from the wackiest
corners of Tumblr to campus politics.
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Nicolas: So basically this culture of
transgression aligns pretty well with what
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is called a weaponized meme so a
weaponized meme is when the internet memes
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become part of political and ideological
propaganda. It can be done by the right
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but as well by all the political spectrum
like here to fight the homophobia in
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Russia. And as a starting point for this
new series of projects we wanted to create
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a kind of mind map of the emerging online
culture wars. So we use this classical
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political compass as a framework. I mean
it's a framework that has been criticized
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a lot but nonetheless it became popular as
a format to exchange content on online
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forums and on the meme-osphere and it
often integrates non-political characters
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and pop-references and so on. So after
studying numerous critical researches on
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the topic, like the Computational
Propaganda Project, Angela Nagel, Florian
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Cramer and so on and also on
investigations, we started to assemble a
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sort of cartography of weaponized meme
elements with the help of Baruch Gottlieb.
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Audio: The Online Culture Wars Project
offers a provisional cartography of
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weaponized meme elements using a
speculative political distribution. Taking
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the political compass as a framework this
cartography offers a symbolic
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representation of online ideological and
political debates in the context of the
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00:36:26,859 --> 00:36:33,549
growing polarization and radicalization.
This ever evolving chart is the result of
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a superposition of hundreds of politicized
memes found online. In addition to
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influential political symbols, actors and
influencers. It is designed as a
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discussion starter intended to expose and
contextualize the present battlefield of
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online culture wars.
Nicolas: So we are currently continuing
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this map as an interactive, contributive
webpage. Well this was a quick selection
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of our old and new works that somehow
resonates with the CCC and thank you for
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your attention.
Applause
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Herald: A big thanks Nicholas. Are there
any questions to Nicholas. There is
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microphone 1.
Micophone 1: Hey congrats. Beautiful
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presentation.
Nikolas:Thanks.
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Micophone 1: I'm curious what's what have
you never dared doing, what's your next
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step? I think it's correlated somehow.
Nicolas: Yeah yeah yeah. So as I said this
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last project is a sort of a starting point
for a new series of investigation and
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research. And at the moment we are
accumulating a lot of documents on the
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online propaganda and online influence.
And we're starting a new series of online
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performance using and basically
challenging those strategies for the
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manipulation of opinions. So we are trying
to develop our own propaganda strategies
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basically.
Herald: Are there any questions from the
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internet. No. Yeah. Then a big warm
applause, thanks for Nicholas.
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Applause
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